


Marker

by Ladycat



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Dark, Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sure he is. Why wouldn't he be?" Another light tenor, though not as husky. Not as aged either, for all he's the older of the two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marker

Three o'clock in the afternoon and all good vampires should be snug-a-bye in their beds, unless otherwise consumed with a death wish. It happened, sometimes, that. Not often, not with the tantalizing pleasures of fresh, sweet blood and a whimpering, terrified body to provide it hovering on the edge of thought and time. But sometimes, yeah. The very freedom of what they were, primal and powerful, drove a few to run screaming into the mid-afternoon sun, a thrashing ball of fire and hysteria. Phoenix-like, really, although no vamp ever rose from their own ashes.

More's the pity.

"You're okay, right?" 

The voice is light, a husky tenor that floats above the miasma surrounding them. It's just clouds, low enough that Spike can feel their watery taint through his clothes, lungs choking on ozone. Just clouds, just nature in all her fucked up glory, cloaking them in sky so that for once, Spike is free from his earthly, day-bound prison.

"Sure he is. Why wouldn't he be?" Another light tenor, though not as husky. Not as aged either, for all he's the older of the two. "I mean, you've got your extra-special day-pass, your fantastic, foggy vistas of scenic happiness -- "

"Vistas of scenic happiness?"

"Oh, shut up."

It's not Xander who says it, though that elongated mouth is slanted with the burn to voice it. It's Spike, the words sticking like taffy, like fucking epoxy, in his throat 'till they come out rough and half-gone, like they've been chewed before public airing.

"Just shut up," he repeats. "Both of you."

Xander's obedient, at least, ghosting closer to thread his fingers with Spike's. The heat of his palm is scalding against all this wet, misty gray chill. Spike doesn't have the energy to clutch like he wants, but he leans. A bit.

Xander holds on more tightly.

The markers are weather-worn, old and cracked. A lie, like all things fucking are: empty, hollow, glittering-wrapped lies, and Spike wants to tear into it. Crack his knuckles against granite adorned with cheap, lying phrases, into dirt that won't be rich and loamy, not like the earth of his childhood -- this will be thin, sandy and grainy, impossible to dig without proper tools to it shore up, a travesty to those who were born in the cold, and the muck, and the rich wet that Spike can smell with every breath he isn't taking.

"Easy," Xander cautions, softly. "Easy."

If Spike wanted, he could squeeze his hand down, shatter the bones held beneath fragile, roughened skin, tear it with broken fragments until blood oozed from the open sores, disgusting, delicious, and hallowed with screaming.

He doesn't.

"I thought you hated him." The other one, the interloper who thinks he's got the right just because he's got the fucking blood, is uneasy in their presence. He likes Xander, that's clear enough, watching him with gray eyes that see too many similarities for Spike's comfort, too many safe havens, forts made of feather-stuffed pillows and warm, welcoming arms, for Spike's sanity.

He's always been jealous. Possessive. Obsessive. Doesn't matter -- they all mean 'Spike' in the end. For near on thirty years he'd had to share, and the hinted breath of a possibility here -- with _him_ \-- sends his face hardening, shifting into snarling fangs he wants to use to rip and tear and -- 

"Easy," Xander says a third time, like he's hard-wired into Spike's thoughts. He might be. "Easy."

"Stop saying that." The brat, again. His hair is as long and feathery as Xander's had been, once upon a sunny afternoon, although lacking the thickness Spike loves. It's paler, _he's_ paler, a washed out image of everything Spike hates and everything Spike loves. Everything Spike's always wanted. Wanted to run the fuck away from. "There's no point."

Challenge, that. It's only Xander's body, still and serene, that keeps Spike from tearing his impudent, impertinent throat out. That, and memories he can't bear to give his full attention to.

Spike rubs his face and wishes it were night. A hundred years and more of missing the sun, and now that he's inches away from seeing it without magic or artifice, and all he wants is the familiar black cloak of night again. The moon is a sweeter mistress.

"Are you going to stand there and say nothing? Just listen to your _boyfriend_ tell you to take it eas -- "

Connor doesn't know. He can't, not really. He's not built to understand, not without chalkboards and primers to give the answers to him, lists and lists of upside down words left goading in the back of the book. He doesn't even see Xander move, suddenly shoved up against a marble wall, choking in a black-gloved hand. His eyes, mouse-gray and so like his mother's, widen even as his body struggles against something he thought weak, thought useless.

He goes limp fast, though, which is a point in his favor. Xander only _looks_ the slightly dopey puppy; when he wants you trapped and hurting, that's how you sodding-well _stay_ until he's done with you, tenacious as a pit-bull and fifty times as mean.

More dangerous than Spike on his nastiest days.

"You get one freebie," Xander says, suddenly husky and cruel. It's a fantastic look on him, watery sunlight shining dull and listless off of brown curls, eye-patch no longer a point of weakness, but a menacing harbinger. He's a big man, Spike's lad, and he's learned how to use his body. "And that was it."

Connor swallows: plunge and wet, quiet click.

"You think you've got an inkling because it's his blood that's built you. You think you have the slightest idea because he _wanted_ you to. Wanted to sodding share with you. But you don't, boy," Spike says, and feels as old as Connor is so bare-arsed young. "You don't know anything. And you never talk about her. Ever."

Xander drops Connor on the down beat, perfectly on point, sliding through the fog to take Spike's hand again, bare skin against bare skin, as they walk out through the cemetery. Behind them, Connor stumbles forward until he's standing smack in the middle of a row of graves, all adorned with the same symbol (looping, whorled, sketched into beauty, a reproduction of the same man's art), the same words ( _their lives for others_ ). Hell, even the stories are pretty much the same, in the end. The first is the most told; the second the easiest to understand; the third a gay anomaly, a moment's chance that granted the respect only begrudgingly given.

Only the names are different:

Darla. Angel. Drusilla.


End file.
